The British Salonika Army was a

field army A field army (or numbered army or simply army) is a military formation in many armed forces, composed of two or more corps and may be subordinate to an army group. Likewise, air armies are equivalent formation within some air forces, and with ...

of the

British Army during World War I The British Army during the First World War fought the largest and most costly war in its long history. Unlike the French and German Armies, the British Army was made up exclusively of volunteers—as opposed to conscripts—at the beginnin ...

. After the armistice in November 1918, it was disbanded, but component units became the newly formed Army of the Black Sea, and General Milne remained in command.

First World War

The Army was formed in

Salonika Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...

under

Lieutenant-General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the ...

Bryan Mahon Bryan Thomas Mahon, (2 April 1862 – 29 September 1930) was an Irish general of the British Army, a senator of the short-lived Senate of Southern Ireland, and a member for eight years of the Irish Free State Senate until his death. Biograph ...

to oppose

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...

n advances in the region as part of the

Macedonian front The Macedonian front, also known as the Salonica front (after Thessaloniki), was a military theatre of World War I formed as a result of an attempt by the Allied Powers to aid Serbia, in the autumn of 1915, against the combined attack of German ...

. The army arrived in Salonika (along with French troops) on 15 October 1915. In May 1916 Lieutenant-General

George Milne Field Marshal George Francis Milne, 1st Baron Milne, (5 November 1866 – 23 March 1948) was a senior British Army officer who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) from 1926 to 1933. He served in the Second Boer War and during ...

replaced Bryan Mahon as commander of the Army. It eventually comprised two

corps Corps (; plural ''corps'' ; from French , from the Latin "body") is a term used for several different kinds of organization. A military innovation by Napoleon I, the formation was first named as such in 1805. The size of a corps varies great ...

and as the Army of the Black Sea remained in place until 1921.Alan Wakefield & Simon Moody, ''Under the Devil's Eye: Britain's Forgotten Army at Salonika 1915–1918'', Stroud: Sutton Publishing (2004). The dead of the British Salonika Army are commemorated by the

Doiran Memorial The Doiran Memorial is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission war memorial that is both a battlefield memorial and a memorial to the missing. It honours the dead of the British Salonika Force as well as commemorating by name the 2171 missing dead o ...

Component units

British Salonika Force, March 1917

XII Corps 12th Corps, Twelfth Corps, or XII Corps may refer to: * 12th Army Corps (France) * XII Corps (Grande Armée), a corps of the Imperial French Army during the Napoleonic Wars * XII (1st Royal Saxon) Corps, a unit of the Imperial German Army * XII ...

* 22nd Division * 26th Division *

60th (2/2nd London) Division The 60th (2/2nd London) Division was an infantry division of the British Army raised during the First World War. It was the second line-formation of the 47th (1/2nd London) Division, and was the second of two such Territorial Force divisions for ...

* 1/1st Lothians and Border Horse XVI Corps *

10th (Irish) Division The 10th (Irish) Division, was one of the first of Kitchener's New Army K1 Army Group divisions (formed from Kitchener's 'first hundred thousand' new volunteers), authorized on 21 August 1914, after the outbreak of the Great War. It included b ...

* 27th Division * 28th Division * 1/1st Surrey Yeomanry GHQ Troops *

7th Mounted Brigade The Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Mounted Brigade (later numbered as the 7th Mounted Brigade) was a yeomanry brigade of the British Army, formed as part of the Territorial Force in 1908. It served dismounted in the Gallipoli Campaign before be ...

8th Mounted Brigade The London Mounted Brigade (later numbered as the 8th Mounted Brigade) was a yeomanry brigade of the British Army, formed as part of the Territorial Force in 1908. It served dismounted in the Gallipoli Campaign before being remounted to serve ...

*16th Wing,

Royal Flying Corps "Through Adversity to the Stars" , colors = , colours_label = , march = , mascot = , anniversaries = , decorations ...

Commanders-in-Chief

Commanders: *4 November 1915 - 15 November 1915 : General Charles C. MonroEncyclopedia Of World War I
/ref> (concurrent with being Commander,

Mediterranean Expeditionary Force The Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) was the part of the British Army during World War I that commanded all Allied forces at Gallipoli and Salonika. It was formed in March 1915, under the command of General Sir Ian Hamilton, at the beginn ...

) *15 November 1915 - 9 May 1916 : Lieutenant-General

*9 May 1916 – 3 January 1917 : Lieutenant-General

*3 January 1917 – 11 January 1917 : Lieutenant-General

Henry Wilson Henry Wilson (born Jeremiah Jones Colbath; February 16, 1812 – November 22, 1875) was an American politician who was the 18th vice president of the United States from 1873 until his death in 1875 and a senator from Massachusetts from 1855 to ...

(temporary) *11 January 1917 – September 1918 : General George Milne *February 1919 – November 1920 : Lieutenant-General Henry Wilson (concurrent with being Commander, Allied Forces in Constantinople)Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives
/ref> * November 1920: Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Harington (continued after 1921 as GOC-in-C Allied Forces of Occupation, Turkey)

References

Bibliography

* {{Refend Military units and formations established in 1915

Macedonian front Greece in World War I